To start off with, this is sort of scrambled as I really didn't get much sleep last night and we got into a huge argument this morning, so please bear with me. I am generally happy, I know this is temporary, but am nearing my wits end and really need to vent. We have a 2.5 year old, wife is pregnant with our second child. She is about 6 months along. Ultimately my biggest frustration at home is that I feel like 99% of what I do is not only not noticed, but it's as though what my wife sees/thinks the opposite of what is actually happening.
For example, for quite some time now, I have made a huge huge effort to get my wife to rest/relax especially on the weekends. I do all of the cooking, the vast majority of cleaning through the week (she usually does a 'big clean' on Sunday mornings), I do all of our shopping. None of this is noticed at all. When she does her weekly cleaning she is super depressed about it, it brings a cloud over the entire house, and makes lots of comments about how "if she doesn't do it then it just doesn't get done". I will specifically say hey hon, I am cleaning through the week, quite a bit actually, but let me know what else I can do to help!!
Our 2.5 year old is very "clingy". If my wife is downstairs then kiddo wants her to be RIGHT next to her. Literally every weekend, all weekend, I am saying wifey please PLEASE go upstairs and rest/relax. She does usually go upstairs and all is fine. Last weekend, I dropped my wife off to get her nails pampered and took kiddo to the park for a few hours. Then when we got home, I insisted that my wife go upstairs while kiddo and I played outside. I would guess she got at LEAST 6-7 hours of 'quiet time'. Well, this morning she made a comment about going to her parents house "so she can just get some time to herself since it doesn't happen at home"... I couldn't help but ask, sweetie, you do know that's why I insist you go upstairs on the weekends? I don't mind at all but know that this is my intention, to make it where you can relax at home? She replies with "right but that's like an hour, if that". I'm sorta shocked... like no, it was not just an hour.... she insists it was, and that this is how every weekend goes for her, that it's nothing but her watching our 2.5 year old. From my viewpoint this is completely and TOTALLY false.
Pregnancies are difficult for her. She usually takes anxiety meds and anti depressants, but can't while pregnant. Our first pregnancy was also very difficult with really similar problems. I feel like she has this habit of focus on ONE bad thing that happened forever ago, and stamping that memory across everything. I really have no idea how to cope with it, I know she doesn't do it on purpose, but it's making her depressed and causing my morale to be in the dumps.
We are in therapy and I have brought this up. Our therapist basically says when I feel like this is happening I need to bring it up up immediately with my wife, which I do, but then she basically says I am just not remembering things correctly :-( I know she is depressed, I know this will get better after the baby is born, but man this is SO frustrating. Any suggestion on coping tips is hugely appreciated
tl;dr: Wife is pregnant, her memories of what I am doing for the family are totally flawed. I spent the weekends trying to make sure she can rest/relax, but her recollection is that she watched the kid literally 24/7 with no or very little help. This is not accurate and I don't know how to approach it or cope with it
Submitted March 01, 2017 at 09:53AM by exhausteddad123 http://ift.tt/2lquREC
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